Rome and Carthage
Carthage was a North African city founded by Phoenician settlers, traditionally in the ninth century BCE, which had grown into the leading naval and commercial power of the western Mediterranean. Its empire was based on trade, colonies and tribute, covering parts of North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia and western Sicily. Rome, by the early third century BCE, controlled most of Italy. Both states had reasons to compete for Sicily, which lay between them.
The Romans called their opponents Poeni, from the word for Phoenicians, and this is why the conflicts are named the Punic Wars. There were three, separated by long periods of peace.
The First Punic War, 264-241 BCE
The war began over the Sicilian city of Messana, where a dispute drew in both powers. It grew into a long contest for control of the island. Rome was strong on land but initially had little naval experience. According to ancient writers, the Romans built a large fleet of their own, copying a captured Carthaginian ship, and equipped their vessels with a boarding device, often called the corvus, to turn sea fights into something like land battles. How effective this device really was is debated, and it appears to have been used less later on.
Rome won naval victories, including one off Mylae in 260 BCE, but also lost fleets, many of them to storms. The war was long and costly for both sides. It ended in 241 BCE when a Roman naval victory near the Aegates Islands cut off Carthaginian supplies. Carthage gave up Sicily and paid an indemnity. Sicily became Rome’s first overseas province. A few years later, while Carthage was occupied with a revolt of its unpaid mercenaries, Rome took Sardinia and Corsica, which the Carthaginians resented. The role of hired soldiers in Carthage’s armies is explained in the article on Carthaginian mercenaries.
The Second Punic War, 218-201 BCE
The second war is the best known because of Hannibal, a Carthaginian general whose family had built up a power base in Spain. After a dispute over the Spanish city of Saguntum, war began in 218 BCE. Hannibal marched from Spain through southern Gaul and over the Alps into Italy, bringing troops and war elephants, though many of the animals and men were lost on the journey.
Hannibal won a series of victories, at the Trebia in 218, at Lake Trasimene in 217 and above all at Cannae in 216 BCE, where a Roman army was surrounded and destroyed. Ancient sources report very heavy Roman losses at Cannae, but the figures vary and should be treated with care. The tactic employed there is explained in the account of Hannibal double envelopment. Some Italian allies, mainly in the south, defected to him.
Rome did not make peace. It avoided large battles for some time, wearing down Hannibal’s forces, and kept most of its allies loyal. It also fought on other fronts, especially in Spain, where Publius Cornelius Scipio, later called Africanus, drove the Carthaginians out. In 204 BCE Scipio invaded North Africa, forcing Carthage to call Hannibal home. At the battle of Zama in 202 BCE Scipio defeated him, and peace followed in 201.
The terms were harsh: Carthage lost its overseas possessions, most of its fleet and its elephants, and agreed to pay a large indemnity over fifty years. It could not wage war outside Africa, and none inside Africa without Rome’s consent. Hannibal later went into exile and, according to tradition, died around 183 BCE.
The Third Punic War, 149-146 BCE
Carthage recovered economically and was strong enough to cause alarm in Rome. A border dispute with the neighbouring Numidian king, Masinissa, an ally of Rome, led Carthage to fight in apparent breach of the treaty. Rome used this as grounds to declare war in 149 BCE. A tradition says that the senator Cato the Elder ended his speeches with a demand that Carthage must be destroyed. Whether he did this so consistently is hard to know.
The siege of the city lasted about three years. It ended in spring 146 BCE when Scipio Aemilianus, grandson by adoption of Scipio Africanus, took the city after fierce street fighting. Much of Carthage was destroyed, its surviving population enslaved and its territory turned into the Roman province of Africa. A popular story says that the Romans sowed the land with salt. There is no good ancient evidence for this, and it is generally regarded as a later invention. The destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE gets fuller treatment under the heading of Carthage destruction.
What the wars changed
Taken together, the wars changed Rome in several ways.
- Territory. Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Spain and Africa became provinces. Rome began to govern lands beyond Italy on a permanent basis.
- Navy and army. Rome learned to fight at sea and kept large armies in the field for years. Service lasting long campaigns put strains on small farmers who made up the army.
- Politics. Success enlarged the power and wealth of the senate and of successful generals. Those developments, along with the pressures on farmers, are part of the story behind the later crisis of the Republic.
- Confidence. After 146 BCE Rome had no equal in the western Mediterranean, and in the same year Roman forces also destroyed Corinth, which signalled a harder approach in the east.
Sources and caution
Almost everything we know comes from Roman or Greek writers, chiefly Polybius, who wrote in the second century BCE, and Livy, who wrote about two centuries after the events. No Carthaginian narrative history survives. The picture of Carthage is therefore filtered through its enemies, and claims such as those about its religious practices need careful handling. Numbers of troops, ships and casualties are often uncertain. The broader context of the Phoenician colonization that created Carthage helps explain why it was a maritime state.
The wars did not make Rome a world empire overnight, but they removed its main rival and gave it a basis for the Roman expansion that followed into the Greek east and beyond.